In Robert Greene’s The 48 Laws of Power, Law 19 is ‘Know Who You’re Dealing With.’
‘Deceive or outmanoeuvre some people and they will spend the rest of their lives seeking revenge. They are wolves in lamb’s clothing. Choose your victims and opponents carefully, then – never offend or deceive the wrong person.’
In the book, Greene regales the true story of a businessman and cattle ranch owner named Norfleet. In 1920, a travelling con man named Joe Furey, backed by a gang of swindlers and crooks, passed through Fort Worth, Texas, and stumbled upon Norfleet. Furey ran the con on the rancher, convincing him to ‘invest’ in several schemes, only to reward Norfleet with envelopes stuffed with newspaper clippings.
There were many victims from Furey’s gang, most of whom cut their losses and chalked it up to experience.
Not our Norfleet, though. Oh no. He found Furey in Jacksonville Florida and ‘personally hauled him off to face justice.’ He went on to Denver to find other members of the gang, bankrupting himself and causing his own divorce in the process. It took 5 years for him to destroy the whole con ring.
Let’s leap forward a century, to near present day UK. In July ’24, Labour ousted The Conservatives after 14 years in power. A lot of Labour voters, myself included, entered this new era with cautious optimism. At last, the Tories were gone. Can we tax the billionaires now? Can we hire more GPs and Social Workers as a result? Can we have a sufficient amount of grit in winter?
I’m writing this in April / May ’26, and the answer has been a resounding ‘no.’
But these aren’t the only reasons Prime Minister Kier Starmer has dirt – and in fact blood – figuratively on his hands. He’s still supporting Israel even after the UN described their assault as a ‘full-fledged genocide.’ He openly admitted on air, on LBC, that he believes Israel does have a right to kill children in Palestine.
Then he admits he has family in Israel. That’s what all this is about. Yes, the Israeli government may be blackmailing the UK Prime Minister because he has family that live there. His position is, and always has been, untenable.
We know, of course, that this assault on Gaza did not begin at the Nova festival attack in 2023. It started in 1948 when David Ben-Gurion, the head of the Jewish Agency, proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel. U.S. President Harry S. Truman recognized the new nation on the same day. There have been routine massacres of the Palestinian people ever since.
Regardless, immediately after the Nova attack – which I of course oppose – many people came out of the woodwork updating their Insta stories and grids, in support of Israel. Stories might disappear after 24 hrs, but my Omininotes don’t. I kept a list. Did these people not realise that Israel has terrorising the Palestinians a similar way to how they treated the Israelis that 7th October, only on a routine basis, and for 75 years? More to the point, do the people still supporting Israel not recognise that we will always remember that they chose to support a terrorist ethnocracy who were systematically wiping out a civilian population?
Many might. I won’t. Starmer himself will always carry that accusation, and that’s why the next vote will more than likely go to the Greens, giving Labour a solitary term in government – one in which they backed a genocide, jailed protesting grandmothers, impoverished disabled people and continued to allow billionaires to balloon their wealth while stripping our public services.
Labour is dead, and it’s because they underestimated the voting public.
